On 3/25/2014 9:14 PM, Joseph Knight wrote:
On Tuesday, March 25, 2014 9:52:25 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:
On 3/25/2014 6:52 PM, Joseph Knight wrote:
It is trivially a theorem of COMP, since the existence of such a
substitution level
is the COMP axiom itself. If COMP is true, then the substitution level is
unknowable (although it can be honed in upon scientifically).
I have trouble with this. How would you know if your consciousness were
different
after the substitution?
COMP is a bet that, if you chose the substitution level correctly, that "you", whatever
"you" are, will survive the substitution.
Yes, I'm well aware of the bet. But if it's impossible to know whether you won
or lost...?
You can consult friends, introspect, make any measurement or think any thought you could
have beforehand.
Why would I trust introspection if at the same time I knew that I had a drastically
different brain? It seems to me it's like the philosophical zombie problem. I can
observe my actions, as can my friends, and we can agree that I act very much like I did
before the doctor replaced my brain. Since I don't think a philosophical zombie is
possible, per the usual arguments, I must still be conscious - but I don't have to be
Brent Meeker. I could be as different as someone successfully pretending to be me; maybe
even more different in my ineffable experiences. Just as I am, in a sense pretending to
be the Brent Meeker of years ago.
It's like a change of reference frame in relativity. How do you "know" that a boost
leaves the laws of physics unchanged? You make any measurement you like, and verify it.
You can't know that the boost didn't cause your brain to act in such a way that you
"just imagined" that the laws of physics were the same, but this is really just the same
as "the laws of physics are the same".
That would be the case if I were the only person and if there were not a comprehensive
theory of relativity relating many other experimental results.
I generally don't know why thought A comes to me instead of thought B. I
can see
that after the substitution you could ask your friends if you seemed
different and
you could compare your remembered past actions and feelings to present ones
in
similar circumstances; but it seems to me it would be impossible to say
with any
confidence that you had "survived" as a stream of consciousness.
I don't know what you mean by "stream of consciousness". How could you ever verify that
your "stream of consciousness" is unbroken, even ignoring the COMP duplication? How you
you know that this moment right now isn't the only "real" moment you've ever
experienced, all the others being false memories? These distinctions are
positivistically meaningless.
Over short periods of time my thoughts overlap in time, which gives the immediate
experince of time and continuity. Of course that doesn't work over periods of
unconsciousness or even sleep. So as you suggest "introspecting" above, I can introspect
short term continuity. Longer term I rely on memory and its consilience with present
perception: Rooms are as I remember them. People are as I remember them and they say they
remember me. In short I have theory-of-the-world that works and that IS positivistically
meaningful (not that I'm a fan of positivism).
If your friends said to acted similar to before, maybe a little different,
couldn't
it be with quite rather different internal narrative - just as a good actor
could
pretend and act like you.
If the actor is good enough, it IS you.
But what if he's only good enough to fool my friends; my friends who are making allowances
that I may be a little different after the doctor's operation?
This reminds me of something Maudlin brought up in a review of Penrose's second
consciousness book. He points out that OF COURSE a computer can be programmed to behave
just like Penrose -- i.e. pass a Turing Test as Penrose, answering exactly how Penrose
would answer. This is completely uncontroversial, and for me, it "proves" COMP
scientifically. If an agent can pass the Turing Test, it is conscious -- this is what we
mean when we call other agents conscious. In fact, this is how we verify that we have
been conscious in the past -- by Turing Testing our memories of ourselves.
But my point is that it's a pretty coarse test. We don't know ourselves that well; That
undetectable failure to survive might be easy to come by.
Brent
Brent
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